Yep, you read that right. Never thought you’d see the day, right? I’m going to defend The What the Health vegan #crankumentary that inspired my blog post entitled How the Health Argument Fails Animal Liberation. To keep track of the critical take downs of this movie there is also a post called What the Health Review Roundup and I’ve been updating it with reviews. Some skeptics have opportunistically used this movie to take pot-shots at veganism itself. I feared this was one of the discrediting effects junk science has on our movement. Actually, it’s not so much that I’m going to defend this movie, because I still do think it’s a pile of pseudoscience crap. But I’m critiquing the reaction (or non-reaction) white critics are having to this film.

With all that I still do think that is wrong about What the Health, there is a Truth threaded in-between the doctor guru talking head bits. This, for the most part have gone virtually unnoticed, particularly by my white self. It wasn’t until I was listening to reviews of this movie by (white) skeptics that I noticed a weird trend. Instead of picking apart the numerous shaky nutrition claims, they seem to be most peeved by the claims of racism related to diet and the environment. And when white people poo-poo something about racism, a red flag goes up for me.

So when I dug in wondering why there was the weird visceral reaction discounting the social justice claims in this movie, I went down a rabbit hole. I still have yet to emerge though. After a year of organizing for science activism I realized finally, Science actually can be pretty shitty. So I’m taking a breather to read and listen. But, I need to just get this post off my plate and it’s coming atcha with less commentary and more citations (which honestly I am still crawling through myself).

These are the racial issues mentioned:

Institutionalized Racism / Food Oppression

Dr. Milton Mills made this claim:

“73% of African Americans are lactose intolerant, 95 percent of Asians, roughly 70 percent of Native Americans and 53 percent of hispanic Americans are lactose intolerant . Our Government is encouraging Americans of color to eat foods that it knows it’s gonna make me ill. Ultimately what that boils down to is the government is telling me as an African American to eat food that’s going to make me ill for no health benefit so that it will benefit dairy farmers, that’s a form of institutionalized racism.”

That’s not too bold of a claim to make. It’s no secret that lactase persistence was an evolutionary adaptation of some human populations particularly those of European decent. While a majority of the world’s population is lactase nonpersistant, in the US it is the intolerance to lactose that is cast as the deviation. So for a governing institution to make food guidelines that marginalizes non-European white populations is pretty much the definition of institutionalized racism.

Environmental Racism/Justice

There was a scene in the movie where they interviewed René, a black woman of Duplin County, North Carolina. The neighborhood she grew up in became the landing spot for a pig farm. Dealing with the ensuing pollution of this farm was an example of environmental racism. There is no debate about the USA’s racial caste system that marginalizes non-white folk and that includes a long rich history of NIMBYism. Environmental Justice is a movement that deals with the environmental inequities against communities and individuals by people in power.

Pseudoscience Oppresses

What/how people eat and where people live are largely a result of the social institutions that provide these basic needs. These social institutions are subject to the legacy of bias built into them to favor a particular group of people. The racism we struggle with today was born out of Enlightenment ideology using (pseudo)science to justify exploitation inventing a version of race based on phenotypic categorization. This is dangerous pseudoscience that is making a Trumpian comeback and skeptics have a duty to rally and squash this the fuck out.

Vegan Traditions as Human Health Politics

This is a topic for another post but for now I would like to acknowledge the intertwined aspects of animal rights vegan traditions that buck the mainstream culture. The culture (in the United States) that makes whiteness the norm. Whatever the intention, the creators of What the Health tapped into racial politics. They gave credence to a truth which, when bundled may have justified a slew of smaller untruths. People of color may better identify with this movie because the large truth of racism was actually given screen time in a ‘scientific’ way. While the nutrition facts may have been dicey, the larger unspoken truth resonates.

One of the the things that now concerns me is the way I have fought against “health vegan” traditions in a perceived attempt to depoliticize our movement. But I think that’s only depolitical from my white perspective when bodies of people of color have been crushed by systemic white supremacy. I see communities of color springing up around vegan health traditions that seemingly have little to do with animal rights but that in itself is an intermingled political struggle. As a privileged person in the United States I cannot fathom what it feels like on a daily basis to be non-white. There is something good happening here and instead of harping on the smaller bits, I would like to see a larger justice issue realized. There is a legitimate distrust of science when it is wielded to justify bigotry and excluded from communities with their own developed epistemology. This needs to change and social science needs to play its role in helping to shape behavior towards constructive solutions that truly avoid our social biases.

One of the things I worried about with the anti-GMO movement was the unsubstantiated myth mongering about Monsanto. It wasn’t that I particularly cared for this company, but I feared what they might get away with if people kept raising false alarms. I guess now we’ll find out because this time, it’s real.

Note that Crowe, a paid employee of Monsanto, has embedded himself quite snugly into the science/skeptic community. While that in itself may not be evidence of wrongdoing, it is something to be aware of. Influence isn’t limited to financial payouts regardless of how much anti-GMO zealots have parodied it to be.

When I wrote “We Are All #Monsanto” in 2014 I meant it in a way to explain how Monsanto was no different than any other company. Those apologetics would take on new meaning. Monsanto may be just as bad as all the rest but that is not a thought that should comfort. As a science activist who was one of the founders of March Against Myths, our platform started with the principle of science as a justice issue. We came out swinging hard and I’m proud of the work we did. Every year we met anti-GMO in the streets bringing direct action tactics to the defense of science. We carefully crafted our mission and installed a code of conduct in representation of our values. My commitment to justice is not limited to the scope of anti-GMO myth mongers. It extends to junk science injustice anywhere especially as it threatens our own community and allies.

There are many layers to this onion, I’ll try to unpeel a few for you.

Peterson and C-16

JBP got public notice with his big stink over a Canadian government’s Bill C-16 that would add gender identity to the already existing criminal code of hate propaganda. He whipped it up as an attack on free speech by way of compelled speech. He ultimately imagines it to be a viral legal doctrine smuggling in radical Marxism. That’s not what their lawyers think. Basically it’s the equivalent issue to the USA’s Bathroom Bill. It’s transphobic fear mongering, straight up, that’s all.1 JBP considers sex and gender to be binaries when science knows better than that.2

It’s unfathomable that Monsanto would get behind this guy given their recent boasting that are one of the best places to work for LGBTQ equality. This action proves that to be a complete farce. To have an academic like JBP plant his flag on the gender issue the way he has done is exploitative and traumatizing to trans/gender non-conforming people. His debates with trans people broke my heart as they asked “why this issue?“. This is not inclusive behavior. This is not how you foster diversity within the company or around it.

Anti-Postmodernism

This is JBP’s real fight and where he enters the GMO issue. He caricatures postmodernism as an anti-intellectual endeavor. Like anything else, it can be done poorly. It is most useful though, as a way to give facts context through social science and the humanities, making it more intellectual. 3

For example I might say, in a postmodern way4, that Organic agriculture is justified given the larger context where rampant synthetic chemical application and corporate corruption caused legitimate problems. Organic could be said to be the legacy of our transgressions of the past. It may very well be true, and I believe it to be so, that we can have our Organic philosophy and eat it to with today’s technology. It could also be that there are some bad actors in Organic that have themselves done harm. But to stop this cycle of badness we need to contextualize today’s facts with yesterday’s lessons utilizing all of the tools of science. Social science denial is still science denial.

This move by Monsanto has the community that rallies around this biotech scrambling. Their Director of Millennial Enragement (sorry, not sorry) Engagement dropped that shit-bomb of an announcement right before many would be off to celebrate the holidays. A brouhaha developed on social media leaving most people asking “Who is this guy Peterson and why is this bad?”. In order to find out they had to steal time away to try to untangle this mess.

There is no good excuse for bringing this guy into the conversation. Even if we were to say “He has bad ideas but good ones too…”5 we still must recognize the socio-political implications. Surely the smallest amount of vetting would reveal this so it can’t come from ignorance. It is in the very least a tactless act especially given the sensitivity Monsanto should have gleaned from years and years of a PR nightmare. Not to mention the climate we’re in with the country divided in half and marginalized groups struggling against a resurgence of hate. This is pouring gas on that fire. It is the absolutely wrong direction.

Hosting an event dismissing people’s anxieties as “dangerous ideologies” reveals bad faith and a callous disregard. It’s an insult to the years of hard work many of us have done in the defense of biotech and science. BTW this includes Monsanto’s own employees, many of which are smart and good people. The rest of us dodged years of Monsanto shill accusations knowing they were completely unfounded. We assured people that we would certainly call out any wrong-doing Monsanto might actually be up to. Now, to remain credible, we must acknowledge “Yes, Monsanto is bad, if even not for the same reasons you may think“. To walk our talk of science in the name of justice we must speak up against this irresponsible act.

I can only guess as to the anxiety Monsanto and their employees feel every day with so much misinformation about their company out there. Misinformation that activists have projected the worst ills of society upon them casting them as nazis, literally. Still, if Monsanto is going to summon up such a polarizing poltergeist they will substantiate their own cynical reputation. Peterson is the wrong person for the wrong time.

Speaking if which, there has been radio silence from Monsanto or any employees. This is not an issue to stay silent on and let fester. Monsanto is responsible for the timing of this announcement and they are responsible for cleaning up for swiftly cleaning up this mess. This is NOT a call to remove JBP as speaker, at all. The message has already been sent about their intent and priorities. I don’t care what Monsanto does but I do expect others to recognize it for the problem that it is..

Biotech, when cast as a justice issue, often focuses on those in the developed world who desperately need better solutions. This is a hollow platitude when we can’t even address ones on our own doorstep.

*This blog post was quickly written to offer links that could best summarize the issue and rewritten for clarity and tone. I’ll admit the preamble was ranty and emotionally charged but justified. It’s only until almost a week later I was able to clear my head a bit and cobble together enough minutes of my time to approach this more methodically. I hope it serves well to describe the issue and I will update this post for reasonable corrections and citations below for this unfamiliar to catch up. For more Peterson articles see the ongoing #eatingCrowe hashtag on Twitter.

For people in positions of privilege and power, it takes far more courage to confront their own biases and stand in solidarity with people who are being discriminated against than it does to complain about people who disagree with them being mean on the Internet.

By dismissing gender, race, class, and privilege, Jordan Peterson’s work fundamentally counters this understanding of power. It literally counters Monsanto’s own Diversity & Inclusion statement. It is unproductive, and makes genuine science communication and engagement efforts by other scientists all the more difficult; it makes engagement with more progressive millennial thinkers impossible; it dismisses the truly important role of the university in the knowledge economy. This is not a free-speech issue, as Peterson would want you to believe; this is also not a matter of diversifying views, as Monsanto probably wants us to believe. This is an issue of whether this platform could have been better used in some other, more inclusive way.

In spite of his failed attempt to give his politics intellectual heft, it should be obvious to any reasonable person that his worldview is unfounded on its face. Consigning the right to determine someone’s gender to the eye of the beholder places excessive faith in the immediacy of perception and the universal equivalence of cultural norms, besides being obviously unkind. His blustery objection to the gender-neutral singular “they” puts Peterson himself in opposition to “Western civilization,” given that the construction appears throughout canonical English literature, including the works of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen. Peterson’s fixation on the chemical foundations of biological sex and measurements of cognitive intelligence is not pragmatic, but metaphysical, attempting to extract essential qualities from social behavior.

Peterson peddles a kind of academic populism in which the philosophies of Heidegger and Kierkegaard are drafted in to support the will of the people and the wisdom of tradition. No one trying to understand how to live should read this book. Anyone interested in the growing assault on liberal values, however, should study it with fear and trembling.

Peterson is a clinical psychologist studying social, abnormal, and personality psychology. But he is best known for the YouTube channel that has made him a “belle of the alt-right,” as described in a November 2017 profile in Canada’s Maclean’s magazine. His “lectures about profound psychological ideas” became hugely popular following his swift rise to notoriety in the fall of 2016, when he refused to comply with university policy on addressing students with preferred gender pronouns. Missing from these videos—which net him more than $50,000 a month on Patreon according to a July report from the Toronto Star—is any commentary on agriculture. Rather, Peterson’s oratory cloaks bigotry in pseudointellectual arguments, revealing a chillingly detached dismissal of civil rights.

The professor claims non-binary identities aren’t valid because there’s no scientific justification for them. Understandable, since most studies only ask for male and female respondents. The few times they are sought for, like in a study published by Harvard University (where Peterson once taught), the quantified population was found to faces high rates of suicide and unemployment.

A controversial University of Toronto professor has railed against a piece of legislation designed to enshrine human rights protections for transgender Canadians, arguing it will criminalize his right to free speech. But he has it all wrong, say experts.

In the big picture, Plett and Peterson are both just another pair of names we can add to a long list of trans rights detractors whose discourse attempts to veil itself in the legitimacy of something else — academia, safety, or the ever painfully ironic banner of “common sense” — because they recognize that a legacy of being anti-rights lands them in blurry black-and-white photographs displayed in a, “Wow, look at these assholes” gallery.

Speaking to an audience overwhelmingly comprised of white men, Peterson said he thought college campuses were “overrun, in large part, with disciplines that have, in my estimation, no valid reason to exist.”

“I think disciplines like women’s studies should be defunded,” he said. “We’re causing full time, destructive employment for people who are causing nothing but trouble. What they promote has zero intellectual credibility.”

If you’re one of the many people who have been unable to see through the thin veneer, unable to see these people for what they are – standard conservatives, misogynists, hysterical anti-feminists – this means that your critical thinking has also been curtailed.

University of Toronto faculty members have spoken out against a proposed website that would list women’s studies and other “postmodern neo-Marxist” professors, saying it has created a climate of fear and intimidation.

The proposed website is spearheaded by controversial U of T psychology professor Jordan Peterson, who made headlines a year ago for publicly refusing to use gender-neutral pronouns.

Exposing the Facebook profiles of two student activists is, especially for a tenured professor earning a six-figure salary, a sad display of bullying and anti-intellectual behaviour. But it’s not the professor’s first endorsement of online harassment. More recently, Peterson announced his plans to launch a website that would allow students to identify left-leaning faculty members and “postmodern” course material, what U of T’s faculty association says has “created a climate of fear and intimidation” at the university.

The very terms Peterson uses to describe his detractors are reminiscent of the tactics of academic blacklisting of the far-right Israeli NGO, Im Tirtzu (IT). It too funded a purported academic project cataloguing courses taught at Israeli universities. In this case, academic courses offering what IT called “post-Zionist” content.

To be clear, Jordan Peterson is not a neo-Nazi, but there’s a reason he’s as popular as he is on the alt-right. You’ll never hear him use the phrase “We must secure a future for our white children”; what you will hear him say is that, while there does appear to be a causal relationship between empowering women and economic growth, we have to consider whether this is good for society, “‘’cause the birth rate is plummeting.” He doesn’t call for a “white ethnostate,” but he does retweet Daily Caller articles with opening lines like: “Yet again an American city is being torn apart by black rioters.” He has dedicated two-and-a-half-hour-long YouTube videos to “identity politics and the Marxist lie of white privilege.”

In fan-edited YouTube videos—including “Jordan Peterson destroys Islam with facts” and “‘They’re only two Genders!’ Jordan Peterson destroy Transgender pundit”—Peterson blows all of the familiar Breitbart- and Rebel-endorsed dog whistles. “Islamophobia,” he has also tweeted, is “a word created by fascists and used by cowards to manipulate morons.” The real cause of the recent wave of sexual assault allegations, he believes, is due to sex no longer being “enshrined in marriage.” In a conversation with Camille Paglia, he lamented that men can’t exert control over “crazy women” by physically beating them. He echoes Donald Trump on fake news, telling followers they can’t trust the media, and makes a point of admiring Trump’s intelligence and accomplishments. Few in the media who have lauded Peterson as being “right” on free speech in universities have bothered to qualify that he is dangerously wrong about everything else, thus bringing him new followers and burnishing his brand.

Jordan Peterson’s protracted doubling down (by now I’m sure it would qualify as “power to 16”) has produced a number of consequences, the first of which is a fury of anti-political correctness conservative writers who want to install their own version of political correctness in which being a dick to trans people is politically correct.

If Peterson were interested in rigour and precision, he would write a paper and listen to the feedback he gets from his colleagues. He would offer arguments and evidence for his views. He would cite sources and explain why his interpretation of those sources ought to be believed. He would listen to experts from their respective fields. That is how a responsible Professor or student carries themselves in a rigorous intellectual community like a university. Peterson has done none of these things and that is why I think he is being irresponsible and negligent.

Peterson is quick becoming one of the alt-right’s most cherished darlings, not just because he is in line with their views on this particular topic and is articulate in his defense of them, but because he’s a kind of role model: because his videos are, again, inspirational videos at heart. A lot of the alt-righters like to think of themselves as the gadflys of and rebels against what they think is a leftist conspiracy, and so conjure up for themselves images of them shouting against the storm, taking a stand, using the ultimately invincible tool of logic to defend what’s right. Except whatever storms they face take the form of Youtube comments and response videos; their principled stand tends to be delivered as a blog post; and their wielding of the tools of logic usually reduces to misplaced smugness.

Bill C-16 came and passed, and now that Jordan Peterson has no steam for his conspiratorial ramblings about trans people, he’s taken a totally and completely unexpected turn to advocating for domestic violence.

Jordan Peterson is a colossal ass — an ignoramus who has become a professor of psychology and uses his tiny sliver of specific knowledge to grant him the authority to pontificate on every other field, about which he knows nothing. He’s putting together a website that will tell you how wrong, as determined by him, your college classes are.

This week we listened to Waking Up with Sam Harris and as big fans we were very disappointed in how he handled his interview with Jordan B. Peterson. So in this episode Thomas goes over exactly why that is, in the hopes that this message reaches Sam.

I don’t normally do book reviews on this blog but after years of I just read two fantastic ones this summer that really blew my mind open. These are both vegan books so I’ll be speaking strictly to the vegan audience.

Both of these books happen to be very quick reads that I was able to devour one a week in my work commute alone. But don’t let that fool you. There are brilliant nuggets of vegan wisdom packed into these dense little compendiums. I pretty much expected that of Aphro-ism as I was familiar with Aph Ko‘s kick-the-door-down entry onto the vegan scene. And holy crap just lookit that beautiful cover art by EastRand Studios! I read Even Vegans Die cuz I’ll read anything Ginny Messina writes but it was the amazing synergism of her and her two co-authors that made it much more than a health/nutrition book one might expect. I suck at reviews but I’m gonna torture myself (and you along with me!) through this because I feel they are that good.

Aphro-ismEssays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters by Aph and Syl Ko

Two bright stars orbited each other in this Vegan galaxy. Each glowing hot, amassed by the history and knowledge of critical theorists, philosophers, and activists. In this galaxian1 gravitational environment of veganism they collided and became a supernova. The raw elements formed and spewed forth from this interaction will both obliterate and rebuild a movement anew. That is this book Aphro-ism which offers the periodic table of social justice they call black veganism.

Veganism is struggling as a movement, it always has. I left it in an embarrassingly public tantrum2 when I realized there was nothing ideological behind veganism afterall. The word itself was created from a Eurocentric point of view no doubt influenced by the struggle and concepts of many peoples and cultures. But even though there was an early nod to “emancipation”3 by an early adherent it was relegated to a “way of living“. Eventually it was the ideas of people of color like Wayne Hsiung, Aph Ko, and Syl Ko that brought me back and reinvigorated me.

I don’t pretend to get this book. It does what most great breakthroughs do. It makes me realize I don’t know as much as I thought (and that itself shows progress). It will take me years to unravel the meaning and apply it towards my activism but that’s what Aph and Syl do. They’re fixing this hypocognition the movement is suffering from by inventing new concepts and prototyped language. Concepts that I took for granted like “animal” were challenged in a way I never considered before. My white experience doesn’t connect the dots on how that is used against people and how it’s ultimately a slur for all.

To fix a problem that spans the diverse membership of this Earth society we need the perspectives of ALL those members to fix it. Apro-ism explains it’s not white veganism decorated with diversity but a true movement of inclusivity. ​The authors recontextualized veganism through the lens of racial experience. In doing so they offer up the opportunity and tools needed to make it the movement it never became, yet.

Disclaimer: Ginny and I are friendly. We have a history going back where she generously donated her time to talk to my group, Vegan Chicago on vegan nutrition. Afterwards I chewed her ear off about science and veganism and she clued me in to the larger history. The same fight against pseudoscience in the movement has been happening and I was a newcomer. Veganism struggles not only from a lack of perspective of a critical and justice lens but from a science scope too. So many vegan science warriors have fallen by the wayside. Not Ginny. Through her years of professional wisdom and ethics she’s stayed the course ​fighting the good fight. So much so that even though this book is an obvious response to Michael Gregor’s “How Not to Die” vegan book, he himself wrote the foreword. This is something I would have never considered. Yet while we can go back and forth venting over the latest junk science flareup in the community she also keeps the larger perspective in balance. She inspires me to be better.

Something that this book caught me off guard though was how the collaboration with the other authors elevated this to something great than a scientific discussion. Adams and Breitman brought a context that pried my mind open to the fact that science informs, but in a context thats meaningful. Adams4 reintroduces the feminist concept of the ethics of care framed in a way that suddenly made sense even beyond maybe its intended meaning. I gloated about how justice was a more important concept than “loving animals” but I neglected to think that loving animals maybe be a side effect of justice. That blew the lid off my white male assumptions yet it’s what feminists have been working on forever and Adams contextualized it for me. How did I get this far without this? The vegan movement has a ways to go. An ethical social justice movement built upon the perspective of all and informed by the self-correcting rigor of science.

This book dealt with the much-needed practicality of health and death as it pertains to us as individuals and us as an entangled society of individuals. I think though that main mission of the book doesn’t do it justice for the implications of what it ended up being. This is a much different approach than that of yet another diet book written by a white doctor. Veganism is not a magic bullet that will make us invincible. It’s being sold that way though which causes all sorts of injustices the authors deftly dispatch once and for all.

In summary
I see both of these books as a salvo for vegan reformation. Neither attacks nor denigrates veganism to do so though. They graciously offer the blueprints and building blocks to makes things right, make them better. In a movement made up of rampaging white guys and big personalities splintering the movement into camps, it’s a relief to see a more constructive approach. This is what we need more of, this is the era of a new movement that recognizes veganism as a movement and a truly beloved community that looks after each other. These are textbooks for the future of veganism.

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*not a video game reference but goddamn I must admit I’m a bit pleased with myself. ↩